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All posts for the month August, 2007

Finally the preview for the next VtES expansion “Lords of the Night” has begun. And it was about time, for about two weeks I’ve been checking the preview page two times daily. You can check the complete preview page at the White Wolf homepage here.

The first preview card is the Setite vampire “Nakhthorheb“. A hefty 10-cap without any out-of-clan disciplines or any title, but the special ability almost(?) makes it up for it. The untap once per minion phase is great, as well the ability to bypass minions with corruptions counters. So the combo goes: place “Corruption” on a minion, use “Forgotten Labyrinth” if necessary. Next, untap and go bleeding, oooh you cannot block anymore. Or even better than “Coruption“, use the new “Revelation of Ecstasy” card (see card text below). Another combo would be playing “Legal Manipulations“, and followed by an “Enticement“. Only the +1 strength seems to be little off, I would have preferred a title (1 or 2 votes) instead.

Also the “Game Trade” magazine has featured a preview article with some new information, at least more reliable than that from the french “Mana Rouge” magazine some weeks ago.

Brute Force [LotN:C]
Cardtype: Combat
Discipline: Potence
Do not replace until after combat
[pot] Strike: make a hand strike at +1 damage or a melee weapon strike at +2 damage.
[POT] Strike: make a hand strike at +2 damage or a melee weapon strike at +3 damage.
Flavour text: “The best way out is always through” Robert Frost, “A Servant to Servants”
Artist: Brian Leblanc

Revelation of Ecstasy [LotN:X]
Cardtype: Action
Discipline: Serpentis
+1 stealth action
[ser] (D) Tap one of your prey’s ready minions.
[SER] As above, and place a corruption counter on that minion. If the number of your corruption counters on the minion equals or exceeds his or her capacity or cost, you may burn those counters to take control of him or her.
Artist: Jon DiBartolo

False Resonance [LotN:X]
Cardtype: Action Modifier
Cost: 1 blood
Discipline: Chimerstry
[chi] Cancel a reaction card that requires Auspex or Dementation as it is played (no cost is paid).
[CHI] +1 stealth, and once this action, this vampire can burn 1 blood to use the “” effect above.
Artist: Alexander Dunnigan

Khazar’s Diary (Endless Night) [LotN:X]
Cardtype: Action
Clan: Giovanni
+1 stealth action.
Put the Diary in play, or add a counter to one in play. When a unique minion in play is burned, add another counter. While this card has seven or more counters, Giovanni get NEC and may take a +1 stealth action to put a minion from any ash heap into play to represent a wraith ally with 2 life, 0 strength, 1 bleed and +1 stealth.
DRAFT: [nec] Hunt for +2 blood.
Artist: John Bridges

Sometimes you would like to build a deck in VtES which should be able to win, but it’s not an intercept deck, nor does it have it access to bleed bounce (i.e. no vampires with either “Dominate” or “Auspex“). So the question is how does it defend against power bleed or stealth bleed? A (more or less) well-known bleed defense moduleis the following combination of 6 master cards.

The defense works in different ways. You need to play the “Major Boons” on a bleed for one, and then let the poor hapless target of the boon take the bleed for, let’s say 5 or 6 from your predator. The “Archon Investigation” and the “Retribution” are deterrents for big bleeds, the “Dummy Corporations” for actual bleed reduction.

If you are not planning to bleed by yourself, e.g. you’re ousting by means of “Fame“/”Dragonbound“/etc. or voting, you may also want to include one or (better) two “Protected Resources” instead of the “Dummy Corporations” or the “Major Boons“.

Another alternative defense against stealth-bleed is the discipline-less “Keep It Simple“, but you need at least some minor intercepts cards in order to use it effectively. E.g. you play a couple of “Elder Interventions” or “Pack Tactics” in your deck to be able to reduce any bleed that has more stealth then by 3, which is quite a number, by using “Keep It Simple” as followup.

See also this article from the Storage Annex website on the topic of non-bouncing defense, although this article describes how to build up an decent intercept defense (read: “wall”) against Stealth Bleed decks.

Over my – admittedly short – VtES drafting experience I came up with the following priority list for drafting. Of course I adjust my behaviour to the expansions that are drafted. For example, 3rd Editionhas an abundance of equipment to draft, so I lower the priority of drafting those.

In terms of drafting vampires I tend to draft small- to mid-cap vampires, since pool management is usually a problem (i.e. the ability to “recover” the blood from the vampires to your pool). But I pay special attention to the vampire’s special abilities. “Malgorzata“, being a 9-cap vampire, has a great special for draft — being able to (indirectly) generate 4 pool with a built-in +1 stealth action.

Celerity Gun (Cel Gun) is a deck archetype in Vampire: the Eternal Struggle. This deck type has been around for a long time, since there is an abundance of small- to mid-cap vampires with superior Celerity. It uses the combo Concealed Weapon and .44 Magnum to equip with these guns during combat. Cel Gun is a classic Rush combat deck, that is its vampire take actions to attack the opponents vampires directly, i.e. by using Bum’s Rush or Haven Uncovered. The deck ousts mainly by inflicting damage through Fame, Tension in the Ranks and/or Dragonbound.

How to win with them
Threaten your predator into submission (i.e. he doesn’t do anything against you). Usually you should be careful what kind of predator you let live. You need to kill a Stealth-Bleed/Powerbleed deck right away. When playing against Vote decks, you might need to kill one or two vampires w/ titles, to reduce the ability of the vote deck to dish out damaging votes. Toolbox decks or other combat decks which combat abilities you can trump, are no or only a small threat. Usually it’s a good idea to show your strength by crippling one or two vampires of your predator, so he’s both intimidated and busy while defending against his predator.

After having dealt with your predator, gun down your prey’s minions next, reducing the number of minions he has, and try to reduce his pool by utilizing Fame, Tension in the Ranks and/or Dragonbound.

Pool management is critical in this deck, since it usually has little or no pool gain. Usual source are blood dolls, vampires are filled up again by using Taste of Vitae. You pay little for your 3 to 4 minions, but the guns are costly, and these you definitely need. So if have 4 vampires with an average capacity of 4, you will spend an additional 2 pool per .44 Magnum which brings you down to 6 pool which is already really close to being ousted. So my general advice is, that you shouldn’t influence out a minion unless you are able to pay a gun for him.

Crypt Composition
Generally there are two choices, either you use all available small- to mid-capacity vampires that have superior Celerity or you also add vampires with inferior Celerity and add some Celerity skill cards. The former version has the advantage that you need no additional setup, but on the other hand the average capacity is increased slightly. The later variant suffers from the need to setup and that it can use the Celerity combat cards not to it full extent, but the vampires are cheaper to influence.
Typical choices for both variants include Sarah Brando, Victor Tolliver and Jimmy Dunn, since they are cheapest vampires with superior Celerity (and without any disadvantages). Since all these are from group 2, you can go either with additional vampires from group 1 or group 3, depending on your preferences.

How to win against them
If you are the predator of a Cel Gun deck, then you have two choices:

either try to oust the Cel Gun decks faster than it kills your minions

make a non-aggresion pact to buy time for build-up

Ousting the Cel Gun deck fast without getting hurt is not easy, since the Cel Gun deck is fast itself. It only needs to bring out small- and mid-cap vampires, and can start attacking rightaway. Ask for help from your grandprey, when one of your minions is going down in torpor (and they usually will go down).

If you are playing a slower or toolbox deck, you need to convince the Cel Gun deck player not to attack. Promise a non-aggression pact for a couple of turns in order to build up. Then try to horde cards for a one or two turn oust, but make sure that the Cel Gun Deck is weakened (low on pool or does not have any rush cards in his hand) when striking. Usually the Cel Gun will attack immediately if you decide to go after him.

Silver bullets against Cel Gun

Centralized Background Check — increases the cost of weapons by one, i.e. making the “Concealed Weapon” card unplayable when used with “.44 Magnum”.

When playing a combat deck yourself, it depends largely on the type of combat you are playing. If you are playing short-range combat with little or no maneuvers you are doomed. If you are playing long-range combat yourself, or can prevent damage regularly, you might succeed against Cel Gun.

If you are the prey of a Cel Gun deck, your best hope is that you an aggressive grand predator, which puts the Cel Gun into defensive, i.e. Cel Gun is rushing his minions, rather than yours. Try to help your grand predator, i.e. rescue his minions from torpor if possible.

In one of last week’s V:tES games I saw another player, Martin Varga (a Slovakian player working for a fortnight in Germany) using the Trophy-cards in his deck, and although the setup was quite slow, the deck was actually working and indeed very strong in the end game. The main trick was to use the combination of Amaranth & Trophy: Diablerie to diablerize the opposing vampire in combat without having to fear the following Blood Hunt.

As this deck concept looked like fun to play, I will have to look at this deck type and try build one my own. Maybe not for use in the regular league games, but definitely in the fun games later that evenings.